My Own Side

It’s April 15th, and the Tax Man wants your hard earned cash. You just spent hours slaving over incomprehensible tax forms. You are done, one way or the other, and you hope you did it right. But then, with sixty thousand plus pages in the tax code, who can be sure? It makes the Porkulus package look like a short story, which is no small feat.

Liberals love to talk about “sustainability.” At least when they are talking about our backyard vegetable gardens. But a growing number of people are becoming alarmed at something that is not sustainable. The massive growth and rapacious appetite for our money that defines our federal government today. These people came out today in hundreds of cities to protest the out of control government spending that is quickly becoming the defining issue of the Obama/Reid/Pelosi White House and Congress.

I attended the Seattle rally at Westlake Plaza, a popular location for protests. It was one of the largest crowds I have ever seen there. Here is a partial crowd shot.

In case you are just listening to the mainstream media outlets and didn’t hear about hundreds of thousands of people who turned out to protest government spending and just wanted to know about the important events today, the Obama’s got a dog. Whoopie.

Here are a few of the sentiments expressed there today.

Yes, there were a couple pitchforks there.

The full gallery of pictures from the Seattle protest is here.

On the way to Seattle, I stopped at another protest in Redmond that I chanced upon. It was smaller, but filled all four corners of a busy intersection there. I was pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm of the people driving by. They were honking and waving constantly. Big government supporters are trying to dismiss this movement as small, but it is clear to anyone paying attention that the issue of massive government taxing and spending is striking a chord in many people who have never picked up a sign to protest anything before. Here are some pictures from the Redmond protest.

The full gallery of pictures from the Redmond protest is here.

To get involved in the Seattle area, go to Liberty Belle’s blog and subscribe to the Seattle Son’s and Daughters of Liberty network for alerts about future events here.

Across the nation on February 27th, 2009, conservatives and disillusioned moderates came out to protest the massive government spending that has been defining the new Obama presidency. Perversely, one of the things that helped the Clintons during the 90’s was how they had so many scandals, people tended to get numb to them. Eventually, new ones failed to shock or surprise. If this first month of Obama’s reign is any indication, we are all going to be very numb indeed to massive government spending by the end.

This sign to me sums up the whole motivation behind this spending binge.

“Stop Buying Votes With Public Money”

This isn’t about the good of the country. It’s about a permanent liberal Democrat majority. The Democrats simply can’t help but overreach. What they don’t want to see is how people are not fooled by it.

People are upset about the rise of socialism and it’s propping up of failure, as well as the expansion of the welfare state.

This was a nice touch. The organizer of the Seattle protest, Liberty Belle, called Washington state senator Patty Murray’s office from the platform and let the crowd leave a message saying how they felt about her voting for these massive spending bills.

Hopefully congress will listen to the woman in this next picture when they are getting ready to pass another one of these Hogzilla bills. Hopefully the Democrats will let them have more than a few hours before they are supposed to all vote Yea on it. They need to understand that we are citizens, not piggy banks for them to raid.

I’ll end with this sobering truth.

Look here for the full gallery of pictures from this protest.

And be sure to visit Liberty Belle’s blog.

There are piglets, there is pork, and then there’s Obama’s trillion dollar Hogzilla spending bill. His supporters called it a “stimulus” bill, but no amount of lipstick on the pig will change it to be anything other than a massive spending bill, targeted at as many left-wing special interests as would fit in a thousand pages. It quickly became named the “Porkulus” bill.

In the fine tradition of dissent that we have been told for eight years is so patriotic, blogger Liberty Belle organized an anti-Porkulus protest in the heart of liberal Seattle. She’s not under any illusions that it will prevent Obama from signing the bill, but it is important that conservatives do some organizing in their community and push back against this and the other spending bills that are sure to follow. And it’s not just conservatives. Liberty Belle started off by emphasizing that this is an issue for everyone regardless of party. Last time I checked we are all stuck with the same economy regardless of political affiliation.

This man’s sign captures the essence of what we are facing.

It’s not change if it’s the same old discredited Marxist theory that history has already proven a failure.

Here’s an 89 year old man who suffered through the Great Depression, and FDR’s policies that prolonged it.

And here are some pictures of the victims of this grand experiment in spending and debt that Obama is dabbling with.

Michelle Malkin helped get the word out about the protest, and she had catered BBQ pork from a local grill. Many thanks for that, Michelle.

This guy jumped up on the stage, started yelling and gave us the Nazi salute. Unhinged.

It took a while for a policeman on a bicycle to show up to calm him down. I had realized earlier that there were almost no police around, something that I had never seen with the other protests. But then, the police know who is more likely to cause a problem, the left or the right.

Obama and the Democrats in Congress may try their spin, but people see through it. This woman gets it.

Here are a few more signs to give you an idea of the crowd’s mood.

Obama wanted this to be a nonpartisan bill. He failed, letting hyper-partisan Nancy and Harry ram it through Congress, uniting the Republicans against it in doing so. He now owns it. Presidents always get the blame. Some people say that is why we elect leaders, so that when things fail we have someone to blame for it. When this massive oinker fails to deliver, he will be the one who will have to “uh” his way through an explanation for that failure.

But sadly, we and our children will still have to pay the bill.

Look here for the full gallery of pictures from this protest.